AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series GPUs Lack CrossFire Support

[Tsing]

For the few who care, AMD has confirmed that its Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards do not support CrossFire, the company's multi-GPU technology. Here's the statement that TechPowerUp received directly from AMD:

Radeon RX 5700 Series GPU's support CrossFire in 'Explicit' multi-GPU mode when running a DX12 or Vulkan game that supports multiple GPU's. The older 'implicit' mode used by legacy DX9/11/OpenGL titles is not supported.

This should not affect most enthusiasts, as the interest in multi-GPU continues to wane even further. AMD is probably better off devoting its time to something else, but TechPowerUp notes that NVIDIA did bring back NVLink for its RTX 2070 SUPER.

AMD, responding to our question on CrossFire compatibility clarified that AMD dropped CrossFire support for "Navi" in favor of DirectX 12 and Vulkan "explicit" multi-GPU mode. The older "implicit" multi-GPU mode - CrossFire - used by DirectX 11, DirectX 9, and OpenGL games is not supported. The AMD statement follows.

 

[Brian_B]

Can't really blame them

 

[Dogsofjune]

Expected. Sli/Crossfire suited it's purpose for it's time.

 

[Dan_D]

Expected. Sli/Crossfire suited it's purpose for it's time.

The purpose and need for it hasn't diminished. The problem is, developers don't support it and DX12 changed things and not for the better on the multi-GPU front.

 

[Strelok]

The purpose and need for it hasn't diminished. The problem is, developers don't support it and DX12 changed things and not for the better on the multi-GPU front.

It was always niche, drivers were spotty and performance outside of a few games was always meh. It makes sense AMD/Nvidia are moving away from it. Too much work for no real benefit.

 

[Dogsofjune]

The purpose and need for it hasn't diminished. The problem is, developers don't support it and DX12 changed things and not for the better on the multi-GPU front.

I would agree with that.

 

[Dan_D]

It was always niche, drivers were spotty and performance outside of a few games was always meh. It makes sense AMD/Nvidia are moving away from it. Too much work for no real benefit.

I ran SLI since the 6800GT's and Ultra's went to PCI-Express. It was a bit rough early on but support grew over the years. Up until shortly after Maxwell, SLI support and performance was generally pretty good. Drivers weren't perfect, but spotty isn't an accurate description of their performance. I also found performance in most of the games I played to be improved by a fairly decent amount.

Then again, I always ran resolutions that required two cards to get decent FPS.